As I recently celebrated my anniversary with my superMAN, one of my heart friends is in the last days before her wedding. Many an early morning we have had Bible study via text and in that time of processing what He’s teaching us through our different stages of life, she has challenged me to meditate on my marriage and consider if there is anything useful to pass on to her as God gloriously unfolds her story.
Twenty-one years. Twenty-one years of being married to my best friend and what have I learned? Could I narrow it down to two things that I think matter the most? Maybe. I still have a lot of life left to live and I certainly am not all-wise and knowing, but what I can share with her is the part of my story that has already been written and maybe she can glean something from it. There is power in sharing story. Here goes, my friend.
Be faithful.
Be faithful to get up every morning and meet with your God and lover of your soul. It will matter to your husband and to your children. It will matter to you. Throughout all the seasons that I have weathered so far, from honeymoon to married with no kids to parenting a lot of kids to where I am now in the teen years, my family has woken up each morning to me in that battered, 70’s puke green chair in the corner of my room. No matter the house or season, that chair welcomes me every morning to meet with my God. It never occurred to me that it mattered until I overheard my husband tell someone that there’s nothing like peeking open one eye in the early morning hours and seeing his wife faithfully sitting in that chair to dig deeper into her study of the Bible and praying over her family.
And then there was that dark season that was painfully difficult, when I was struggling with what I thought about God and wondered why I was even here on this planet. I didn’t grace that chair much then. Again, I didn’t think it mattered, until my husband, going through his own rough journey at the time, begged me to get back in that chair. He needed me to be in that chair praying for him and pouring over scripture hunting for words of encouragement for us to press on.
Because that chair is in our room, it never occurred to me that it might matter to my kids as well, until I awkwardly listened in on one of their conversations as they argued over who was going to get that old green chair when I die someday. “Are you kidding? No way. I get first dibs on that chair that mom prays in every day.” It matters. Your faithfulness to show up and meet with your God and press in to Him in every season matters.
Is it easy to get up before the sun, sometimes with only a few hours of sleep? If I miss that time for some reason, is it easy to carve out time later in the day, sometimes in snippets here and there? Is it easy to delve into daily study of His word, carry it through to completion and find time to meet up with friends for accountability? Is it easy to turn off my mindless thoughts of what needs to be done today and instead focus it in on prayer? Is it easy to weave scripture into prayers for those that I love? Not at all to all of the above. No one ever said that being faithful is easy, but I will tell you that it is worth it.
Be faithful.
Thank you for sharing this! With a little and a full time job I struggle now more than ever to do this and needed to read it. I have an old brown lazy boy in the corner of our room that I need to get to more than I have been!
Sweet Brandi, This spoke to my heart and is being used this morning as a winnowing fan! Praising God for you,your family and your precious faithfulness to the one who is FAITHFUL!
Hugs,Serena